The Crain Reunion - Around Mid-1980s

The Crain Reunion: This photo was probably taken in the mid to late 1980s. The reunion was held at Faith Temple Church, Taylors, S.C. 

Ben and Lola Dill Crain and Their Children

 Ben and Lola Dill Crain are pictured here.

 Pictured above are Ben and Lola Dill Crain, standing with their children. The children are (from left to right) Claude, Carl, Jay, Theron, James, and Hazel. 

The five sons of Ben and Lola Dill Crain are pictured here. They are (from left to right) Theron, Jim, Jay, Claude, and Carl.

Hazel Crain Ramey is shown in the above photo. She is shown below with two of her children: Luther (on the running board of the car) and Sandra. Morris, her third child, was not born at the time of the photo, so the photo had to be made before 1947.

 Pictured is Hazel's husband, Ernest Ramey, the father of their children.  

Lola Dill Crain (left) walks on a street in Greenville, S.C., with her daughter, Hazel (center) and Lola's grandchild, Mildred (daughter of Claude and Gertrude Crain). A ""street Photographer" made this photo.

Claude and Gertie Crain

Gertie and Claude Crain are shown above as they celebrate an anniversary of their marriage. 

Claude and Gertie Crain are shown in the below photos as they stand on the porch of their home in Taylors, S.C., during earlier days. 

 Claude Crain is pictured in his home. 

 Claude Crain is pictured at a Ben Crain Reunion at Faith Temple Church, Taylors, S.C.

Shown (from left) are Theron Crain, Claude Crain, and Jay Crain, as they attend a Ben Crain Reunion at Faith Temple Church in Taylors, S.C.

The Rev. Homer Crain

 The Rev. Homer Crain, a son of Claude Crain, is shown riding his Tennessee Walking Horse. Homer was wounded in World War II. He died at age 64, after serving many years as a pastor. 

 The Rev. Homer Crain is pictured attending a Ben Crain Reunion held at Faith Temple Church in Taylors, S.C.

The Rev. Homer Crain is shown in this photo as a young man with a good-looking mule. He is shown standing in front of his parents' house. He was a son of Claude and Gertie Crain.

Theron and James Crain

Theron and James Crain, brothers, are pictured here. The were sons of Ben Crain. 

Theron Crain and his wife, Veltra, are shown in this photo as they celebrate anniversary. Their sones, Herbert (left) and Ken are shown at the far left.

Pictured is James "Jim" Crain standing behind a plow. 

Jim and Gertrude Crain's daughters, Doris (the older one) and Mary Ellen, are pictured below. 

 

Jay Crain, a son of Ben Crain, and his wife, Nell Willis Crain, are pictured here.

Carl C. Crain and his wife, Lillian Parker Crain, are pictured at their farm.

 

 Carl C. Crain, a son of Ben Crain, is pictured standing with his wife, Lillian Parker Crain.

Some Crains are pictured. Jay Crain, a son of Ben Crain is shown at the far left.  

The Rev. Fred E. Crain: Out Among the People

2015 09 24: The Rev. Fred E. Crain told me about some of his ministry, and I wrote down this account. -- Larry Steve Crain, nephew to Uncle Fred 

Pictured is the Rev. Fred E. Crain and his wife, Frances Hawkins Crain.

 

As a child, I, Steve Crain, knew Hubert and Earl Barton and saw them around the Blue Ridge (upper Greenville County, S.C.) area. Their farm – theirs and their mother’s – sat only a stone’s throw from Gum Springs Pentecostal Holiness Church, the church my family attended from babyhood until I was in my late elementary school years (probably fifth grade).

Turning right out of the church parking lot, I could look to my left and see the Barton farm. From the road, the terraced, cultivated acres dropped gradually to woodlands. That landscape was beautiful. Uncle Fred thinks they might have owned 20 to 30 acres, a typical amount of land for Southern subsistence farmers. I recall the Barton’s white frame house and old, unpainted barn. A gray, unpainted, wooden well house, covering an active well, stood in the yard and was visible from the road. A one-horse wagon sat in the hallway of the barn.

Fred knew Hubert and Earl in their youth. He lived not far from them as a young man and was perhaps a year older than Earl. 

“Hubert was probably three or four years older than Earl,” Fred says. “Earl worked at Taylors Lumber Yard in Taylors for many years. I think his brother kept on working on the farm. I heard that Earl, late in life, got into gambling [machines] and gambled away all his money. He’d get paid and go gamble.”

An Alewine family owned Taylors Lumber Yard.

“They owned it till they died out,” Fred says.

Hubert and Earl lived with their mother. Their father had died.

“The father was gone before I remember anything,” Fred says. “Guy was the oldest of four boys and one girl born to Hubert and Earl’s parents. Guy dated a girl and went wild over her, but she wouldn’t marry him. She might have been leading him on just to have someone to go somewhere with. When she wouldn’t marry him, he went batty. They took to the asylum. I don’t think he ever got out.”

The next-oldest Barton brother, as Fred recollects, was Ralph.

“Ralph went in the army and ‘never came home,’ as they say,” Fred notes. “He met some girl out in maybe Louisiana and never brought her home to meet his family. He might have come home once.” 

Fred remembers only one girl, Beatrice, being born to the Barton family.

“She married T.C. Foster,” Fred says. “They arranged it that she would slip out of her family’s house and start walking down the road. T.C. came along in his car and got her. There was a little store where people gathered, down near our house near the creek. When T.C. and Beatrice passed that store, T.C. yelled out the car window to a few people standing at the store, ‘I got the gal!’”

Hubert and Earl got into Gum Springs PH Church a while before they died, Fred says, indicating that the brothers accepted the Lord.

Fred experienced an interesting interaction with Hubert while Fred served as an assistant pastor at Faith Temple Church.

Men would gather and talk in a group at Ralph Fowler’s general store, then located about a mile and a half below Mountain View Elementary School on Hwy 253 in Greenville County, S.C.

Fred had heard that those men who gathered at Ralph’s store had discussed his “going around and trying to win people to the Lord.”

“I’ll never get saved,” Willie Fowler, a long-time acquaintance of the Crains, had reportedly said during done of those discussions.

Hubert Barton reportedly said at one of those meetings, “If he [Fred] comes to my house, I’ll run him off.”

Fred heard about Hubert’s threat and drove to Hubert’s house to visit.

“I got out of my car and stood on the ground,” Fred said. “Hubert came out of his house and pointed at the highway.”

Herbert said to Fred, “You see that road? Hit it!”

Fred got back into his car and left.

“I guess he went back to the store and told them what he said to me,” Fred says.

Pictured are the Rev. Fred E. Crain and his mother, Lillian Parker Crain. 

Some time after that, Fred drove by his mother’s house. As they visited, Lillian Parker Crain, his mother, said, “I feel like we ought to go up to Willie’s [Willie Fowler].”

Fred drove his mother the short distance up to Willie and Buenna Fowler’s house.

“The three of us sat in the front room and talked for about ten minutes,” Fred says.  “Then Willie came from another part of the house and stood, leaning at the door of the room. He looked sort of like he felt he was being left out. He stood there, talking for about 10 minutes.”

Willie then sat on the couch with Fred, and Fred asked him, “Wouldn’t you like to accept the Lord, Mr. Fowler?”

“Yes, I would,” Willie said.

“I went through some Scriptures with him,” Fred says. “The Willie took my hand and went to crying and praying and shaking me. It was in the early 1980s.”

Willie’s wife, Buenna, was wiping her eyes, Fred says.

“He had told them at the store that he’d never be saved,” Fred says. “Willie started coming to church [Faith Temple] with his wife.”

Ralph Fowler, who owned the store, later said he “got saved” when listening to Oral Roberts.

Later, Fred passed by a room in the hospital, and Hubert Barton, whom Fred didn’t see in the room, hollered at him to come in. Hubert was sitting on a bed and said to Fred, “Come up here and sit down.”

“He talked as if all was OK, then,” Fred said. “He’d been going to Gum Springs. They’d both been going to Gum Springs Church . . . Earl and Hubert.”

Fred used to visit Roy Lynn and try to win him to the Lord.

“Roy Lynn – you know, I couldn’t do anything with him at his home,” Fred says. “I visited him several times at home. He didn’t want to talk about religious stuff. One time, he got out his big pistol, laid it on the counter, and told about how he used to be a prison guard.”

Roy became sick and entered a hospital.

“But when he got in the hospital, he was different,” Fred says. “He called me to come and see him.”

Fred says he and Roy prayed for Roy to be saved.

“I think it was about six years later that Roy died,” Fred says.

The Ben and Lola Dill Crain Home Place and Farm

 The Ben Crain and Lola Dill Crain home place shown in summer (probably pictured here in the early 1970s).

 The same Ben Crain home place is pictured here in winter (probably photographed in the early 1970s).

 Shown is a view of the garden, barn, and house on the Ben Crain home place. 

 The Ben Crain house, probably photographed in 1970 by Larry Steve Crain. 

 Shown is the Ben Crain house. "I lived in this house with my father, mother, and younger sister during my fifth grade year in school," says Larry Steve Crain.   

 Shown is the Ben Crain house.

 A pony named Beauty, owned by J.B. Crain, grazes in front of the Ben Crain home place.

 Shown is the Ben Crain house.

 Ben Crain is pictured as he proudly displays two mules in front of his barn on his farm. He farmed and worked as a carpenter. 
 

 Mildred Crain and Hazel Crain Ramey are pictured standing in front of the Ben Crain house. Hazel was the only daughter of Ben and Lola Dill Crain. She had five brothers. 

 Pictured are Lola Dill Crain and Ben Crain as they stand in front of their home. 

 Shown are  Ben and Lola Dill Crain host a reunion on their property.

Shown is a table -- spread with delicious home-cooked food as the Ben Crain family gathers in summertime in 1955. 

 

Pictured is the Ben Crain farm, from the top of a hill. 

People attending the Ben Crain Family Reunion

Pictured are some folk at a Ben Crain Reunion (probably late 1970s or early 1980s).

 Shown are (from left) Theron, Donal, Kenneth, and James "Jim" Crain. 

 

 Shown are James, Hazel (Ramey), Theron, and Jay Crain -- siblings.

 Shown are siblings of Ben and Lola Dill Crain: (from left) Jim, Jay, Hazel, Claude, and Theron. Missing is Carl C. Crain, who had already passed on at the time the photograph was made.
 

Jay Crain